Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the sequel to the acclaimed 'Metroidvania' game Ori and the Blind Forest (made by Moon Studios), is just about to be released on PC and Xbox One.

　　Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which won our Wccftech Award for the Most Anticipated Platform Game of both staff and community, will launch on March 11th. Players will have plenty of choices on where to get it between Xbox Game Pass, Steam, and the Microsoft Store.

　　The sequel sounds ambitious, as the developers have previously said Ori and the Will of the Wisps is about three times as big as the first installment. Furthermore, in a new interview published today on Metro GameCentral, senior producer Daniel Smith explained how the game has been influenced by Zelda.

　　I think overall our formula in Blind Forest was: ‘Let’s create the best design and gameplay experience we can, the best visuals, the best music. So we’re trying to really carry that formula forward, but just elevate it. Like, let’s really improve upon all of the best aspects of Blind Forest. I think one of the things that really improves upon our original formula is that Blind Forest, although being an open world, was more or less linear; you always had one quest in front of you to do. In Ori and the Will of the Wisps we’re really incorporating many more RPG elements, not just in terms of character progression because that is very unique, but equipping these different shards and especially your combat – it’s very fresh to this IP. But even then we’ve got an all-new quest system in the map.

　　There’s a heavy influence from Zelda this time around. And so not only are the golden path quests a little bit more non-linear, you can choose to go get one particular wisp instead of another. Now there’s optional quests and we’ve tried to put a lot of personality into the optional quests. We’ve greatly expanded the cast of characters and so a lot of even the optional quests have emotional weight to them. And I feel like that quality, that emotional quality, is really how Ori is trying to really celebrate the Metroidvania genre and push it further, to really be differentiated. Before Blind Forest, I wasn’t aware of many other Metroidvanias that made people cry.

　　Are you hyped for Ori and the Will of the Wisps? Let us know in the comments and check out below some stunning new gameplay captured by Rock, Paper, Shotgun.